


If I Went Under

by Ameliorably



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Bathtub, Gen, Hotel, Introspection, Loneliness, Post War, Reverse Culture Shock, Stateside, hopelessness, pondering the point of existence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-28 04:51:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10072646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ameliorably/pseuds/Ameliorably
Summary: Margaret lands stateside post-war and feels alone and completely out of place, and all she wants is a bath.





	1. Chapter 1

She’s been back on home soil for three minutes now, and already she feels like a foreigner in her home country. Home is not what it feels like, and the feeling of dread, the dark knot in her gut, the numbness she feels, all grow and threaten to engulf her. This isn’t home. There’s nothing here, there’s no one here. No familiar faces at the airport, not even family. This shouldn’t surprise her though; even as a child they were never there. Her mother was always drunk or off sleeping with other men, her sister too young or uninterested, and her father altogether absent. His only love was the army. 

She has nothing. No house, no car, no husband, no family, nobody. “Just the army,” she whispers to herself as she waits at the baggage carousel for her bags, dressed to the nines in her Class A’s, the woolen jacket scratching at her neck. The army and a feeling of emptiness. Maybe she’ll simply become a husk, as empty as she is on the inside, and blow away.

Her bags come around and she stares at them dispassionately. All of a sudden can’t decide whether to leave them there, claim them or jump on with them. Strange impulses jump out at her from nowhere, like her mind taunting her because she feels nothing but the weight of her own existence. She grabs her bags quickly and hurries out to the taxi rank, because if she makes a snap sensible decision then she won't have to consider the other options.

When she sees the taxis all lined up she’s almost brought to her knees by a wave of despair. Her hands go slack and one of her bags falls to the ground. She doesn’t even know where she’s going, doesn’t know the name of any of the hotels in this town.

She’s brought back to reality by a driver calling out, “Taxi, mam?”

She must look like less of a wreck than she feels, or perhaps it’s just the uniform.

“Uh, yes, thank you.”

He takes her bags from her and loads them into the trunk as she slides herself into the back seat. 

“Where are you headed?” The driver asks. He looks at her in the rearview mirror expectantly as she tries to formulate an answer.

She stops herself before she simply blurts out “I want a bath”.

Suddenly the urge to hide herself in a room and immerse herself in warm water is overwhelming, an antidote, the anti Korea. Maybe then she’ll start to feel normal.

“Take me to a 4 star hotel.”

“Any one in particular?”

“No,” she pauses before deciding to continue, “I don’t know this city, and I’ve been in Korea for three years.”

The driver just nods once and the car starts moving to wherever the hell they’re going.

She doesn’t like this. This lack of a destination only serves to increase her feelings of alienness, this lack of control. Sure, she could have made plans before she left Korea, but that made it all feel so final. 

She couldn’t handle final. Couldn’t handle admitting to herself that she felt more at home in a warzone, that she’d lived there as long as she’d lived anywhere. That that camp and it’s ridiculous inhabitants were more like family and acceptance than anything else she’d felt.

She takes a deep breath and holds it, trying not to cry. Her eyes blur anyway, and the city goes past in shades of brown with the occasional splash of colour. She misses her tent, the uncomfortable cot, the little home she’d made. Her familiar space. 

She’d missed that already at the 8063rd, but she’d at least had a familiar setting and a job to do. Not anymore. Sure, she was still in the army, but for the first time in her life she felt completely without an anchor, floating without a tether. Totally lost.

“Here we are, then.” He says the name of a hotel that she barely registers. It doesn’t matter. She’s not intending to leave her room until her furlough is up,  _ Or until the army makes me. _

She physically starts at that thought, that insidious little voice. What in earth is wrong with her?  _ Get a grip, Houlihan.  _

The taxi driver is looking at her with concern.  _ Great. _

“Uh, thank you.”

He helps her with her bags and she pays him. She tips him handsomely. After all, it’s only money, and why the hell does she need money?

She stops herself from shaking her head at herself and forges on into the lobby. Waiting at the desk she’s disoriented again. Lost watching people mill around, move with purpose. They have lives, wives, husbands, lovers. Her hands are shaking.

“May I help you, mam?”

She crashes back to the present, “Uh, yes, please, I’d like a room for six nights please, do you have any with a bathtub?”

The clerk’s brow furrows slightly, “Six nights and a bathtub, yes m'am, we do.”

He rummages around for a key, “Room 608,” he says, handing it to her, “A bellhop will bring your bags up shortly.”

She tells him not to worry and hoists her bags herself. She doesn’t want help, and she’s not waiting around any longer than she has to.

She presses the elevator call button and waits for it to arrive. She doesn’t put her bags down,  she just wants to be shut somewhere by herself so she can try and remember how to breathe. A couple in their late twenties come over and stand next to her as they too wait for the elevator. She almost groans out loud. Why can’t the universe leave her alone? If she still believed in a god she would think he was sitting up there taunting her, laughing at her, but war has destroyed any residual belief that might have once been held in such things.

The elevator arrives and she and her luggage climb in. The couple, of course, follow. They’re elegantly dressed and keep touching each other. His arm is around her and she keeps rubbing his hand and gazing into his eyes. Margaret can’t stand it. Not even Donald looked at her like that. No, there was only one man who did that, and she never believed he was serious. Maybe he was, but it’s too late for that now. The war is over, and she’ll likely never see him again. She has no reason to ever see him again.

She tries focussing on a flower in the wallpaper, but there isn’t a flower in the world interesting enough to stop her from noticing their quiet murmurs, their contented sighs, the gaping void opening up within her. She’s wound tighter than a spring with the effort it takes to keep herself together. Her eyes are glued firmly on the floor indicator: 3,4,5,6.

The elevator dings as it finally reaches her floor and she charges out into the corridor without so much as a glance behind her.


	2. Chapter 2

She scans room numbers until she arrives at her own and roughly shoves the key in and opens the door.

It’s so neat, so tidy, so clean. Where once cleanliness was a yardstick of quality, now it’s just another reminder of just how far she is from camp, from divey hotels, from 3 day passes to Seoul and Tokyo. Another reminder that she’s alone.

After she drops her bags to the floor with an unceremonious thump she goes and roughly closes the curtains. She doesn’t want to see the city or be reminded of where she isn’t, she just wants to take a bath, to sink her body into the warm water and forget about it all. She glances at the room service menu propped up beside the bed and throws it across the room. Self care is out the window and the menu bears the brunt of her irritation with herself and her inability to just snap out of it. Her hat is next, it spins as it arcs over the bed.

She takes herself and the tightness in her head into the tiny hotel bathroom and turns on the water for the bath, carelessly squirting the contents of a tiny bottle of complimentary hotel bubble bath into the tub. The tub’s no clawfoot, but it’s more than she’s had in a long time. As the steaming water pours in and the bubbles mount, Margaret begins to undress. She stares at herself in the mirror, her eyes meet themselves in a challenge. She still looks good, but her face is thinner, and the dark circles under her eyes have been there so long now that she doesn’t remember what she looks like without them.

 

She struggles momentarily with unhooking the button hidden beneath her collar before shucking her jacket and all the layers between it and her skin. 

Now naked she’s lost in her reflection. Who is she? She used to know. Hell, she more than knew, she'd been sure. She’d been Major Margaret Houlihan, army nurse. Sure of her convictions, her beliefs,  _ and of what daddy wanted you to do. _

It's then the tears start falling. She no longer feels certainty, there’s not a constant to be found. Her father may still have his opinions on what he thinks she should be doing, but they are no longer welcome, jarring uncomfortably with whatever it is she wants or feels.

Her eyes move down her reflection; her now even narrower shoulders slope gently down to her arms, and her breasts, now less full, hang lower than they used to. Her face is stony as her eyes leak, the crumple has been controlled. She doesn’t want to be having these emotions. Her hands move down her abdomen, checking and reacquainting. They freeze when she reaches the scar near her right hip. 

Fresh tears burst her hastily erected banks and turn into sobs at the thought of the man who’d put it there: the best male friend she’d ever had, and possibly more, Hawkeye Pierce. She trusted the skill of his hands long before she fully trusted him. His hands, at least, had never let her down. Though the same could not be said for he himself, there was still something about him, a warmth that had begun to more and more like home, and god knows what their goodbye was supposed to mean. 

She feels empty. She’s been pulled out of the Korean dust, roots she’d not known she’d had now exposed. But it’s not the place, she knows, it’s the people. She's. not supposed to need people, how could she be so stupid? Had life on the move at every whim of the army taught her nothing? Closeness only leads to pain. Trouble was, so did not letting anyone in. Life for her was unwinnable.

Margaret angrily swipes at her tears as they slow again. 

The tub is almost full now. She carefully dips a toe into the water and turns off the hot water, allowing the cold to run a moment longer. Though hot water would be a novel way to feel something new, she doesn't want to deal with the painful aftermath of soaking in it. 

Climbing in, she sinks down into the beautifully warm water and stills, willing it to wash away the ever present gaping emptiness, but now she’s just warm and wet and miserable.

Unbidden thoughts enter her head, what’s the point of continuing to live, what was the point to begin with? She’s past peak usefulness now, after all that work she did in the wars, and if she’s not careful her childbearing years will have passed too. She’s already well past her peak in those. How on earth is she meant to find a man that fast, let alone a decent one? She fingers the small scar Frank gave her when he stabbed her in the OR. That had been about her engagement to Donald. Two finer men than they one would hope you could meet anywhere, but it didn’t seem to be that easy.

She remembers Colonel Potter’s parting words to her, 

_ “I know you’ve got your career in order, but don’t forget to have a happy life, too.” _

But how exactly was she meant to do that? It seemed impossible, insurmountable. 

The difference between having a father and having a dad was clearer than ever. Her own father just wanted her to have the best army career, that way he’d look good in front of his friends and be able to forget that her mother hadn’t borne him a son. Colonel Potter on the other hand, was only concerned that she find what  _ she  _ wanted, what she needed. 

 

She could end it all now, then she wouldn’t have to find the secret to her own happiness, she would simply no longer exist. 

She’s tired, so tired.

Fat, hot, traitorous tears roll down her cheeks again. She has a fond memory, she cries, she thinks about her own miserable reality, she cries.  _ You’re useless, you can’t even manage coming home. Face it, you moron, you’re alone! Your father would be disgusted. _

She closes her eyes and plunges herself under the water, her breath bubbling to the surface. She could just stay under here and stop breathing. She wouldn’t have to find the meaning of her own existence, she’d be gone. Then eventually someone would find her, but who would be looking?  _ Probably housekeeping.  _ She’d forgotten the Do Not Disturb sign. 

But Her father was off being retired Mr Regular Army Colonel like he actually mattered, and Hawkeye, BJ, Colonel Potter,  _ everyone  _ was all home with their families, continuing the lives they'd left behind. They wouldn't be looking for her. 

They wouldn't even notice if she was gone. In a fit of hot white rage she bursts up out of the water and screams in frustration, the shrill sound echoing off the tiled walls. Water sloshes from the tub from being disturbed so violently..

She stands up, sloshing even more water. She fumbles for a towel.  _ Who’s stupid idea was it to have this bath again? _

She wraps herself in a towel, making no further attempts to dry herself and leaves the room, flopping face first onto the bed, letting the numbness she’d started with envelope her once more. She needs a plan. Preferably one better than going AWOL by refusing to come out of her hotel room.

All she knows is that she can’t stay here, she needs company.

Hawkeye is the first person that pops into her head. She pretends she doesn’t know why, but she does. He’s her Korean War confidante, one of her dearest friends. Hell, maybe he’ll give her another kiss to remember and they’ll live happily ever after. She snorts and mutters to herself, “Unlikely.” 

But even without that, she’d love to see his face again, and his dad sounds like a wonderful man. If that fails she’ll head to Missouri.

She gets up and goes in search of her dress uniform, roughly putting it all back one. She doesn’t care what she looks like, and she’s not about to do her hair. She scrapes it into a rough bun and puts her hat on top. She’s leaving. She hasn’t unpacked so there’s nothing to shove back in her bags. She slips her shoes on over the top of her nylon clad feet.

First stop, the fort she was meant to be assigned to after her furlough, and then the bus station.

She’s heading north.


End file.
